


98

by sandlaw



Category: Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-13 15:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11187633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandlaw/pseuds/sandlaw
Summary: Chicagopolis was built on a swamp, of all things.Fuck trade infrastructure. This sucks.





	1. Rm 322, 415 Porter St, Chicagopolis IL

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chicagos fucked up weather choices](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=chicagos+fucked+up+weather+choices).



2:05AM  
PROBLEM SLEUTH RESIDENCY

You wake up feeling thick and clammy with the summer heat, sweat rolling off you in unpleasant beads. Chicagopolis has never been known for its forgiving weather, and at times like these, you really wonder whether or not you should quit scrapping the sunny side up pamphlets about the wonders of somewhere out west that always end up stuffed in the creases of your P.O. box. 

Shucking off your ratty (now damp; gross) tank top gives barely any relief. Everything feels painstakingly slow in humidity, and deep breaths feel shallow and oppressive. The window, open to the city heat, seems like the biggest offender, but the idea of shutting yourself in with stale air all night is almost as unappealing as moving from your spot on the futon at all. You drag your tongue against the front of your teeth, mouth acidic and bitter and dry. 

 

God, you could really use something cold right about now.

 

Summer discomfort finally winning out over summer lethargy, you swing your legs over the side of the bed, hoping the sudden burst of movement will be enough to keep you going till you get a pair of pants on. 

You drag your feet through the motions, throwing on a clean top and the thinnest slacks you own. Reluctantly, the trenchcoat goes on, feeling a thousand times heavier than it could ever possibly be, dual items be damned. You prop the hat on without a fuss, though. You’d have to be some sort of tactless loon to go out anywhere without a good hat, spare or otherwise.

You barely make it out the door when you feel sweat sticking the fabric to your skin. It itches in a way that nearly makes you 180 back into your room and pray that the tap comes through your shower head ice cold by some miracle of God. 

 

You were never one for wishful thinking. The trip down to the corner mart only lasts a few blocks at most, but feels like a marathon.


	2. 1200  St. Lawrence Ct., Chicagopolis IL

1:34AM  
P.I. PI’S OFFICE

 

Pickle Inspector picks himself out of his makeshift corner fort, particle boards rattling dangerously as he drags himself by hands and knees to the middle of his office. The smell of bile coils aggressively against everything, and when he dry heaves he thanks his past self again for neglecting to install any form of carpeting.  


He sits up and pulls at his dress shirt, fingers barely remembering how buttons work (were they mismatched since this morning?), dry despite the heat crushing him from all sides. Pickle Inspector idly smacks his lips, tongue feeling heavy in his mouth and teeth stained yellow from poor enamel health. 

 

_Dehydration._

 

He frantically rubs a palm over his aching eyes, squinting about in the dark. Truthfully, he’d like nothing more than to slip back into the haze of alcohol-addled sleep, REM be damned, but Inspector wasn’t feeling keen on dying in a pool of his own stomach acid, sweat and poor choices. Not tonight, anyways. 

Feeling for all intents and purposes a ragdoll being picked up limb by limb by strings, Inspector shucked off his shirt, managing to procure a relatively fresh duplicate from the file cabinet strewn open and on its side at the edge of the room. He yanks out the plug for the coffee maker for good measure, noting the darkened color of the glass pot left on the semi-broken heater for twelve hours too long. 

 

~~_Buy a new pot_ ~~  
_Buy a new **coffee** pot_

 

Inspector idly runs his bony fingers over his thinly covered ribcage, running over the rest of his mental checklist before shakily shoving buttons through their corresponding holes, every odd count first. It’s easier to fix a misalignment if you go by every other button first. 

His face feels disgustingly greasy, but at least his dry system kept him from sweating buckets in the city heat. The thermostat gauges a solid 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Pickle Inspector leaves his mess behind in the office, already forgetting his prerogative. 

 

_Rehydrate_

 

Inspector spaces while jiggling his key in his office door lock free, blinking owlishly at his own reflection in the shatterproof glass strewn with his name and profession in sharp bronze letters. He’d stop by the 24 hour mart, first. Buy a pack of ice and struggle to bring it home. Chew on the cubes throughout his inevitable insomnia, and nurse a batch of aspirin until his headache subsided enough to grant him another bout of rest that would help him wait out the oppressive Chicagopolis head. 

But the second bit of his list felt strange through the heat and hangover haze.

 

_Buy new pot_

 

Funny, he thinks vaguely as he ambles down the building stairs. He can’t really remember needing any new cookingware.


	3. 89 St. Haven Cir., Chicagopolis IL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i only feel like updating this fic when its humid as balls where i am

11:04PM

“Daaaaaaad,” a small voice cuts through the night silence, two small hands smacking Ace’s bare stomach loudly. Ace grunts, startled awake. He cracks an eye open, feeling immediate disdain for waking up in what felt like one hundred goddamn degrees of MK’s demon asscrack. He waits for his vision to focus on the small offender by his bed. 

Little Sawyer (affectionately nicknamed Sonhearst) looks doe-eyed up at his father, standing in his little summer racecar pajamas. A glance at the clock beside him reads 11:44PM. Ace grumbles, shifting slowly so as to not wake his slumbering wife beside him.

“Keep it down, kiddo. What’s the issue?” he grunts, scratching his stomach and yawning wide. God, he needed to wrap up some extra freelance cases down at the PD and get an AC unit installed, stat. This shit was getting ridiculous.

“It’s too hot! I can’t sleep!” Sonhearst whisper-whines, twisting his torso and letting his arms flail along as if it would emphasize just how much the weather had him suffering. Ace snorts. The bed creaks in complaint as he rolls himself up and out of bed, slipping his feet to the floor. He passes on the slippers he usually wears around the house. Even just his boxers feels like too much right now. His wife shifts in her sleep, making a vague murmur before rolling over and settling soundly back into stillness. 

Ace checks to make sure she’s settled in alright before moving slowly out of the room, ruffling Sonhearst’s hair as he passes. He springs into step behind him, watching Ace expectantly.

Ace still can’t get his head completely around living in a multi-story house, in what barely passes for a city equivalent of a suburb to boot. He’d been raised in the city his whole life, and needless to say there’s a lot more wiggle room here than in the old apartment him and his multitude of siblings used to always scrap for space in. Ace trods across the hall and down the stairs, quietly opening a small closet under the stairs. Sonhearst peers around him curiously. 

He pulls out a small fan, about the size of a dinner plate and covered with a slightly dented metal grating. Ace squints at it, sticking his finger in between a few rows of metal and pulling experimentally. The thin metal bends with a loud groan, moving back more towards its intended shape. Ace gives it another once-over before shutting the closet and trudging his way back upstairs, Sonhearst on his heels.

Sawyer finally lets him off the hook once the fan’s set up on his little window sill beside his little green soldiers and plastic superheros, settling back into bed and sighing in exaggerated contentedness at the breeze washing around his room. Ace gives his son a peck on the forehead, and settles for another head pat instead of a traditional tuck in, since the only blankets in the room had long been thrown onto the carpet floor sometime earlier in the night. 

When he finally settles back down in bed, the sheets are blessedly two degrees cooler than they were when he got up. For good measure though, Ace flips his pillow over, lying down to relish the temporary cool bliss of the Untouched Pillow Side. The springs groan again under his sudden shift in weight, and this time his wife turns with a small mumble but off by a yawn. 

“Huh?” Ace turns to face her, sleepiness already hitting him in waves. He tucks one hand up under his pillow and uses the other one to move a lock of hair out of her face and behind her hair. Dorris cracks an eye open, eyeing her husband as sardonically as she could muster in her exhausted state. Ace just smiles back.  
“Asked wha’s wrong,” she says a bit more coherently. She groggily reaches up to lightly swat Ace’s hand away, quipping about the heat when he left it resting too long against her cheek. 

“Kid’s dyin’ in this heat. Got that old desk fan working for him,” he says. Dorris frowns.

“He’ll get sick with that thing on all night.”

“Kept the window open. He’ll be fine--”

“You better go shut that off soon as your up, still. Don’t need him catching something right before his summer camp starts,” Dorris lightly smacks Ace on the arm, her small pout taking the harsh out of her words. 

“Yes ma’am,” Ace near salutes in response, earning him another light smack and a laugh. He’d pay a million and one dollars for the heat to lighten up then and there, if only to let him wrap his arms around her without the unappealing promise of trapping in even more summer heat and sweat.


	4. Pharma's Shop, 4 blocks East of Sleuth’s Apartment

1:58AM  
CITY SEWERS

 

Droog likes to tell Slick he’s an idiot to go out and about in his full ensemble, done up in double layers and in all black to boot. No sense in getting cooked alive out there; might as well confess to the PD if you’re looking to get fried. It’ll be faster and arguably less of a mess. 

 

“At least I get out of this dump,” Slick shoots back, eyeing Droog where he sits, leg swung over the other one and newspaper blocking his face from view. There’s no usual telltale signal of smoke, but he can hear him chewing idly on the unlit end of a cigarette. Thank god. Boxcars must have chewed him out for stinking up the place when it already smelled like burning asphalt and sewage down here. Droog just shrugged.

 

“I have a brand to upkeep, boss,” he says flippantly, turning the page. Slick’s eye twitches when he sees a bit of the… actual reading material peek up over the edge of the outer newspaper. Despite his name, Droog was just a gross old man. As if reading his thoughts, Droog’s eyes came up over the pages, eyeing Slick down before tapping the inner pages back in place and raising the paper as a whole once more. 

 

“If appearing above-ground fashionably means not coming out at all in the hot weather, well. That’s just a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” he says, foot propped on his other knee shifting off and back to the floor. Slick snorts. 

 

“I’m running out fer ice,” is all he says before he pulls himself up the metal ladder leading to the pothole up above. If he’s stuck down there another second with Clubs’ and Boxcars’ harmonic snoring and Droog reading his risque material out in the open like the shameless bastard he is, he was going to throw himself into the city river if the sweltering heat didn’t have mercy and kill him first. 

 

Slick listens for the rumble of passing vehicles, unsurprised when none come. The pothole comes loose with the right one-handed push, and before long, he’s off into his city, hands shoved unceremoniously in his pockets, right hand idly flipping a small, closed swiss knife behind the cover of fabric. 

 

He beelines for the only drugstore open at these hours on a Sunday; Pharma’s place down main and off Lexington. Slick pushes his way in with a snort, spitting onto the pavement behind him before walking inside. 

 

“Only” was definitely an overstatement. There were other shops around downtown, but Slick’s been to this one the most. He didn’t know if the other places in other directions sold ice, but he wasn’t really in the mood to go doing any guessing and checking tonight. He tips his hat down, not wanting to bother with any people or politics tonight. Even Slick has his limits, and it was somewhere up there ranging from ninety-five degrees and up.

 

He’s got his arm in the big oversized stand-up industrial freezer in the back of the pharmacy when someone has the balls to come up behind him and bump him halfway into the coldbox, sending him scrambling trying to keep his weight backwards. Someone guffaws behind him, and when he turns around he is definitely not above gutting whoever thought that was a good idea.

 

His swiss is the closest, and before he even gets a good look at the culprit’s face, he’s got the sharpest blade out and raring to go. A thick hand grabs his good wrist in the same instant, keeping it pointed up in the air a bit higher than what was exactly considered comfortable for Slick. He glowers when things click into place.

 

“Didn’t expect to be running into you here,” Sleuth drawls, looking all too smug for Slick’s liking. 

 

“I was in the area,” he says, subtly relaxing in Sleuth’s grip. He refused to give him the satisfaction of flailing in his grasp. 

 

“Also, it’s hot as balls out there and I needed ice. Which I was getting to, until you decided to would be funny to hip-check me into the fucking freezer.” 

Sleuth’s growing grin failed to change Slick’s stance on the subject. 

 

“Aw, you gotta admit; that was a little funny,” he says, finally lowering his hand and letting Slick go. Slick flicks his knife closed, moving fast enough that the pocketknife seems to simply disappear from his grasp. He idly rubs his good wrist, matching Sleuth’s grin with a terrifying smile of his own. 

 

“Yeah? Why don’t I pop you in one of my own, then. I got plenty of freezers waitin’ with your name on it,” Slick says. “We’ll see how long you keep your cool for.” 

 

Sleuth just crosses his arms. 

 

“See,” he says, playful grin still lingering on his face. “Now I know you’re makin’ another murderous threat at me. But I’m honestly considerin’ taking you up on that offer.” He jabs one thumb towards the front door of the shop, over his shoulder. “I mean, have you _felt it_ out there?” 

 

Slick snorts. “No, I phased through the ground like a fucking midsummer version of Jacob Marley,” he says, pulling at Sleuth’s loose lapel. “Even though you’re the one who looked like you just died in a ditch or something. Jesus, Sleuth. Buy a real goddamn shirt for once,” Slick says, letting the coat drop back over Sleuth’s shoddy excuse for a tanktop. Surprisingly enough, Sleuth actually has the decency to look embarrassed tonight. 

 

“I wasn’t exactly expectin’ to go out meeting anyone in the dead of night,” he says, thinly veiling his offense. “Shoulda guessed you and yours woulda been stalkin’ about at this hour though.” Sleuth pats his lapels of his coat straight again while Slick just shoots him a curious look. 

 

“Yeah?” Slick says, “That make you one’a mine, then?”

 

“Well,” Sleuth hums, moving in a step closer. He presses a hand up against the surface behind slick, weight bringing him forward but keeping them far enough apart. 

 

“That depends on some extenuating circumstances,” he says, eyeing Slick carefully. Slick can’t keep the edge of his mouth from twitching up into a full-fledged grin. 

 

“That so?” he says, crossing his arms and tapping a metal finger against the sleeve covering his good arm. “Care to share?”

 

“Think a favor is a fair enough trade, sellin’ myself out to someone so notorious like this,” his voice lowering a bit as he leans in closer. “In a drugstore no less.”

 

Slick feigns thoughtfulness. “I think that can be arranged,” he says, leaning back against the freezer in relaxed anticipation. Until he sees Sleuth’s eyes lit up in mischievous victory. 

 

Sleuth’s outstretched hand curls around the handle of the freezer door beside Slick, pulling it open with a sure yank. Slick blinks as Sleuth leans past him, fishing out two large bags of ice with ease and letting the door swing shut on its own. 

 

“Great!” he says, looking quite satisfied with himself while Slick stands there, dumbfounded. Sleuth starts making his way over to the register. “You can cover my share, then.”

 

He barely ducks fast enough to dodge the shiv that goes flying at his head.


End file.
